Giving Thanks

The bio I include with prints for people who buy my photography poses this question: How many ways are there to give thanks, to give honor? Giving Thanks gets a formal nod this coming week, with gatherings of family and friends. Some will recall earlier holidays when more chairs rounded the table. It can be difficult to muster gratitude when grief seems to have the louder, more insistent voice.

One way I overcame my own soul's season of sorrow years ago was to stretch the practice of gratitude far beyond the fourth Thursday in November. A daily journaling practice of writing ten small somethings I was grateful for, every day, reawakened my senses to all the good and joyous and beautiful in the world that was only waiting for me to notice, and give a nod of recognition.

Photography, mindful photography, has become for me a kind of walking meditation, a practice that attempts to answer the question of my bio: one way, the photographer's way, is to be deliberately present. I tell my photography students, notice what you notice. What catches not only your eye, but your breath?

Increasingly I am drawn to expansive scenes that evoke the emotions of serenity, peacefulness, calm and receptivity.  For many, me included, giving thanks is an act of reverence, of worship. 

How do you give thanks? What seemingly small somethings would make a daily gratitude list for you?

Here are a few of mine, gleaned from the past couple of weeks:

I am grateful that the torn disc in my lower back is healing slowly and that I can once again drive and walk and photograph at a gentle pace.

I am grateful for the play of waning light on still water.

I am grateful that our little cove in Duck is beginning to fill with late autumn arrivals. 

I am grateful to once again have the chance to teach Mindful Nature Photography at After Dark, a community outreach program of winter evening classes offered at All Saints Episcopal Church. (Fees collected for the classes, which are given by volunteers, are donated in entirety to local charities such as our food bank, an outreach for which I am also grateful.)

Here are those same thoughts, expressed visually: